Study on polymer brushes controlled by metal-free ATRP and their wettability
WANG Zi'an
LI Hongye
PAN Na
MA Guozhao
WANG Liping
LI Guang
Abstract：Aiming at the problems of residual metal catalysts and limited substrate applicability in tradi-tional surface-initiated atomic transfer radical polymerization(SI-ATRP),this work proposes a new strat-egy of surface-initiated metal-free ATRP(metal-free ATRP)based on polydopamine-assisted.Firstly,the polydopamine(PDA)coating was formed on the glass substrates through the self-polymerization of dopa-mine.Subsequently,the surface was functionalized with 2-bromoisobutyryl bromide to obtain the bromi-nated initiator layer(Glass@PDA-Br).Using Glass@PDA-Br as the initiator and methyl methacrylate(MMA)as the monomer,the surface-initiated metal-free ATRP was conducted under 365 nm UV irradia-tion.The resulting products were characterized and analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy,scan-ning electron microscopy,and gel permeation chromatography.The results indicated that poly(methyl methacrylate)(PMMA)was successfully grafted from the glass surface.The water contact angle of the PMMA-grafted glass slide reached 136.9°,exhibiting a markedly hydrophobic state.Furthermore,the metal-free ATRP of MMA from the glass surface possessed the characteristics of a"living"/controlled rad-ical polymerization.This method achieves the controlled hydrophobic modification of glass surfaces and is expected to broaden the pathways for functionalizing solid substrates and the application prospects of met-al-free ATRP.
Keywords：metal-free ATRPsurface-initiated polymerizationpolydopaminebromoisobutyryl function-alizationhydrophobic modification
Publication Date：2026-06-25
Online Publishing Date：2026-08-28(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：10( 415-424 )